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A Word of Thanks to Our Sponsors (You)

Oct 5, 2012
By .
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It's been more than two months since Patrick announced that we'd joined the Amazon affiliate program in an effort to defray some of the cost of running Popehat. Today I'm reporting on how it's going.

1. You all ordered 244 items through our affiliate links, buying $5,287.59 worth of merchandise, netting us $308.01.

2. If you all buy 7 more items, our referral rate goes up to 6%.

3. This amount was somewhat less than the costs of Dreamhost (for hosting) and Woopra (for traffic monitoring) during this period. That's largely my fault. During my hiatus, I didn't bother to reduce our bandwidth and monitoring plans from the higher levels required during, for instance, the huge surge of traffic during the Oatmeal v. FunnyJunk era. My bad.

4. We told you all before that we were going to donate excess money to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education every quarter. Because it's my own damn fault that there wasn't any excess during this period because I didn't dial the plans back when I was on hiatus, I've just made a $250 donation to FIRE. They can always use more. Please consider donating.

5. I CAN SEE WHAT YOU ORDER. Ha! Kidding! I can only see what "you" collectively order. There's no way to tell what any particular person orders; that's private. But we can see in the aggregate the sorts of things Popehat readers like. So — the person who ordered The Law of Superheroes from our link yesterday, good on you. The people who ordered the The Bloggess' book Let's Pretend This Never Happened: (A Mostly True Memoir), I hope that you, like me, laughed so hard that you had a coughing fit and greyed out for a minute. The person who has time to play Dark Souls — I envy you. The people who bought Metallica — rock on. Whoever bought all-purpose lubricant: I hope that you had a really productive weekend around the house, or a really awesome one, depending.

We're never going to make money off of this, but it's nice not to have to spend too much out of our own pockets, and it will be nice if we can throw some bucks to a free-speech charity now and then. Thanks again.

Last 5 posts by Ken White

19 Comments
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19 Comments

  1. Jack B.  •  Oct 5, 2012 @9:07 am

    I'm glad you're clocking a little dough with this.

    I ordered Panzram: A Journal of Murder as a birthday present, and was worried my purchase would end up in a "Road to Popehat: Amazon Edition" post.

  2. Shawn  •  Oct 5, 2012 @9:15 am

    Just idle curiosity, did my purchase of the book "Towers of Midnight" get credited to you guys?

  3. David  •  Oct 5, 2012 @9:18 am

    BTW, we're still awaiting the first snowfall, so it's not too late to buy the bleachers first mentioned on Instapundit Day!

  4. Ken  •  Oct 5, 2012 @9:29 am

    @Shawn: well, I see that somebody bought it; no way to tell if that was you. But thank you.

  5. Shawn  •  Oct 5, 2012 @9:33 am

    @Ken: Awesome! I do a lot of work on the Amazon mTurk site, and cash in my earnings there for products, so I wasn't sure if that purchase was going to count for you guys or not. I'm glad it did, so I can feel more confident about future items through the search here!

  6. Jack B.  •  Oct 5, 2012 @9:35 am

    Any Popehat readers who happen to be audiophiles might want to order the AudioQuest K2 Terminated Speaker Cable through Popehat.

    If I order 7 of them do you get the increase to 6%, or do I need to get 7 separate items? I need a new three-wolf shirt, too.

  7. M.  •  Oct 5, 2012 @10:06 am

    Wow, it lubricates and penetrates! Males are obsolete!

  8. supagold  •  Oct 5, 2012 @10:11 am

    I'm missing the referral link somehow. Where is it? I keep a folder of referral links in my bookmarks for blogs I want to support, and I'd like to add you guys…

  9. Grandy  •  Oct 5, 2012 @10:34 am

    @supagold – it's on the right hand side, below "Become a fan on facebook". Do you not see it? Is it possible Work is blocking it?

  10. Jess  •  Oct 5, 2012 @10:43 am

    @M – snicker :-)

    I'm picking up a few things via your link now. For everyone else, Amy Alkon's book "I see rude people" is also available on Amazon. I purchased it a ways back before you set up the link.

  11. Dan  •  Oct 5, 2012 @10:48 am

    Now I see the added value of the Amazon program. Just as Road to Popehat chronicles how sub-literate perverts find this site, Road to Popehat Breaking Even can chronicle the funny, sad, and awful things people buy on Amazon through the site, accompanied by the same snarky commentary.

  12. Agent T  •  Oct 5, 2012 @10:59 am

    Whorpsies…. Okay, so I'm using Chrome with Ghostery privacy DoNotTrack add-in, and Amazon Affliates is blocked. The area under the Become a Fan on Facebook is empty. I've unblocked AA for your site. Others may have this problem so just FYR. Next time you post about the Amazon program, you might want to mention that AA can be blocked by privacy add-ons.

  13. Roscoe  •  Oct 5, 2012 @12:11 pm

    A question. I often go to Amazon to browse. If I go to Amazon from your site, does it get credit for anything I buy while I am browsing?

    Also, if anyone from the site buys an electric cooled pony harness with fuel injection, it wasn't me.

  14. Lee  •  Oct 5, 2012 @1:21 pm

    Adblock Plus blocks the Amazon link. To disable in FireFox click tools Adblock plus disable on Popehat.com

  15. AlphaCentauri  •  Oct 5, 2012 @2:25 pm

    @Roscoe: My understanding is that anything you purchase in the next 24 hours will be credited, so long as you don't delete your cookies or visit another affiliate link in the interim.

  16. CourtneyLee  •  Oct 5, 2012 @2:41 pm

    Now I want to buy something outrageously hilarious just to make the Popehat crew laugh.

    I'm glad the affiliate link is working out for you guys. I bought a couple ebooks through it instead of through my Kindle app once I started remembering that taking a moment to go through here helps my favorite blawg.

  17. Douglas Muth  •  Oct 6, 2012 @12:13 pm

    You paid MORE than $300 for web hosting for a 2 month period?

    Unless you're doing astonishing levels of traffic, you're probably being taken for a ride. As I stated before, I'll be happy to refer you to another webhost. (one that just happens to value free speech very highly, in fact)

    On a related note, I noticed that you host a lot of PDFs on here. That's probably the back of your traffic. You may want to take a closer look at Amazon S3 for storing some of those assets. It's very cost effective.

  18. AMB  •  Oct 6, 2012 @8:12 pm

    At Amazon, we like to play a game called "I didn't know we sold that". If any of you are wondering what you can buy to both support Popehat and give Ken something to muse over in his aggregate report, may I suggest:

    A supersize container of live ladybugs: http://www.amazon.com/Live-Ladybugs-Hirts-Gardens-Approximately/dp/B0057AZ9JU

    Or possibly a yodelling pickle: http://www.amazon.com/Accoutrements-11761-Yodelling-Pickle/dp/B0010VS078

  19. Earle  •  Oct 6, 2012 @9:01 pm

    Thanks for the reminder. I'm building an unRaid server and will be getting some parts soon. As much as I love Newegg I'll make a point to use Amazon instead.